arrears of rent which had accumulated enormously since the great famine of 1845-7. There was a League for the North and a League for the South of Ireland. The leaders of the agitation were largely composed of Catholic priests; but the chief directors of the Southern League were Duffy, who had been conspicuous as a member of the "Young Ireland" Party, and Frederick Lucas, an English Catholic; whilst the leaders of the Northern League were Dr. M'Knight, a Presbyterian journalist, and the Rev. John Rogers, Moderator of the General Assembly in the North.2

The Irish peasant was in need of sympathy. While the London ruffian was beating out his victim's brains for a shilling's-worth of gin, the Irishman was driven to murder from excess of agony of mind and body. So completely were the Irish tenants in the landlords' power, that the very name of liberty must have sounded strange in their ears. On many estates the "rules of the estate' pressed heavily upon the population. In some cases, no tenant was allowed even to marry, or to give any of his family in marriage without a written licence from the agent. On others two families were not permitted to live under the same roof, nor visitors or lodgers to be harboured at the penalty of eviction, the reason for these rules being the desire of the compilers of the Irish Rhetrae to prevent the multiplication of the people, and in this manner to keep down the poor rate. An instance of this custom was brought to the notice of the Times newspaper by "S. G. O." in 1851. He wrote

"On the estate of . . . there lived, a few months ago, a man and his wife, Michael and Judith Donoghue; they lived in the house of one Casey. An order had gone forth on the estate (a common order in Ireland) that no tenant is to admit any lodger into his house. This was a general order. It appears, however, that sometimes special orders are given, having regard to particular individuals. The Donoghues had a nephew, one Denis Shea. This boy had no father living. He had lived with a grandmother, who had been turned out of her holding for harbouring him. Denis Shea was twelve years old-a child of decidedly dishonest habits. Orders were given by the driver of this estate that this child should not be harboured upon it. This young Cain, thus branded and prosecuted, being a thief he had stolen a shilling, a hen, and done many other such crimes as a neglected twelve-year-old famishing child will do-wandered about. One night he came to his Aunt Donoghue, who lodged with Casey. He had the hen with him.

"Casey told his lodgers not to 'allow him in the house,' as the agent's drivers had given orders about it. The woman, the child's

1 Frederick Lucas (1812-1855), elected member for the county of Meath in 1852.

2 Appendix LXI, quotations from the Times, etc.

aunt, took up a pike, or pitchfork, and struck him down with it; the child was crying at the time. The man, Donoghue, his uncle, with a cord tied the child's hands behind his back. The poor child after a while crawls or staggers to the door of one Sullivan, and tried to get in there. The maid of Sullivan called to Donoghue to take him away. This he did; but he afterwards returned with his hands still tied behind his back. Donoghue had already beaten him severely. The child seeks refuge in other cabins, but is pursued by his character-he was so bad a boy, the fear of the agent and the driver-all were forbidden to shelter him. He is brought back by some neighbours, in the night, to Casey's, where his uncle and aunt lived. The said neighbours tried to force the sinking child in upon his relations. There is a struggle at the door. The child was heard asking some one to put him upright. In the morning there is blood upon the threshold. The child is stiff dead-a corpse, with its arms tied; around it every mark of a last fearful struggle for shelter-food-the common rights of humanity. It was,

"The Donoghues were tried at the late Kerry assizes. morally, a clear case of murder; but it was said, or believed, that these Donoghues acted not in malice to the child, but under a sort of sense of self-preservation that they felt to admit him was to become wanderers themselves. They were indicted for manslaughter, and found guilty."

How indiscreet must have been the tyranny of the taskmasters, when, out of fear of these men's dreadful power, an orphan, a child of twelve, half-dead with exhaustion and illusage, was left a whole night upon its uncle's doorstep with its little arms tied behind its back, to die before morning of the effects of its brutal treatment! The judge who passed sentence on the Donoghues addressed them thus

"The poor boy whose death you caused was between twelve and thirteen years of age. His mother at one time held a little dwelling, from which she was expelled. His father was dead. His mother had left him, and he was alone and unprotected. He found refuge with his grandmother, who held a farm, from which she was removed in consequence of her harbouring this poor boy, as the agent on the property had given public notice to the tenantry that expulsion from their farms would be the penalty inflicted on them if they harboured any persons having no residence on the estate. This poor boy was

then left without a house to shelter him or a friend to assist him. He was an unhappy outcast. . . . He went to the house of a man named Coffey, whose wife humanely gave him a little food, but she was afraid to shelter him in her house, as the agent had given orders that distress for twelve months' rent would be made on any tenant who should harbour any persons not resident on the estate and that they would also be expelled from their farms. He is turned adrift to the world, friendless and unprotected. He came to Casey's house, where you, his uncle and aunt, resided. He applied for relief as he was in a state of destitution. Casey, with whom you lodged, desired you to turn him. from the house, as he was afraid the orders of the agent would be

enforced against him. . . . You committed the offence, not with the desire to inflict death, but influenced by fear that Casey would be expelled from his holding. The poor child is turned out of doors; and the next proof was, that you, Judith, took a pike-handle and beat him violently with it while lying on the ground. He implored of you to spare him, and he promised to leave the place. He raised himself from the ground, and bound, as he was, went tottering along from house to house, but there was no refuge for the wretched outcast. As a last resource he turned his steps to Coffey's house, but some of the neighbours threatened to tell the agent if Coffey harboured him. Coffey had, however, the humanity to take him to Casey's house, where you resided. He fell twice from weakness and the result of the injuries you inflicted on him. He is supported to the house, and a scene ensued which I find difficult to describe. The door was opened by you, Judith, and a struggle ensues. Coffey and another man endeavoured to force the boy in-you keeping him out. He bleeds profusely. The threshold is smeared with blood. You succeed in keeping him out; and he, unable to walk, rolls himself along the ground, till he gets to the wall, where he remains. Night passes over him, and on the following morning he is found by the neighbours cold, stiff, and dead. . . . I do not think, however, that you inflicted the injuries with an intention to cause death, it was through fear that the threat would be carried out against Casey. Casey acted under the influence of the threats of those in authority, but such is no justification for the offence. It forms no defence, that such an order was given as that which appeared in evidence on the trial. For an order from the execution of which death ensues is not only not sanctioned by law, but is directly at variance with it."

It seems a pity that no special law was in existence at the time to meet such a case. A law might have so easily been drawn up for the guidance of starving tenants on Irish estates, without unnecessarily wounding the susceptibilities of landlords.

In 1850 a proposal had been made, which, if carried out, would certainly have extracted a thorn from the side of Ireland. In that year Russell brought forward a Bill for the abolition of the office of Lord-Lieutenant, and the appointment in its stead of a fourth Secretary of State for Ireland. The matter had already been brought before the notice of Parliament by Joseph Hume, first of all in 1823 and again in 1830. At length, in 1847, ▾ Lord Clarendon, in accepting the Viceroyalty, stipulated that the Whig Government should abolish the anomalous office at the earliest opportunity, and Russell's Bill was a fulfilment of the Governmental promise. The measure was supported zealously by Hume and hesitatingly by Peel, and the second reading carried by 295 to 70, but the Bill was not proceeded with. The change was too novel, and men's opinions had not matured in regard to it either one way or the other. Had the measure

been limited to the abolition of the Viceroyalty and the reconstruction of the Irish Department on lines more attuned to what was locally required, it would probably have passed, but it apparently aimed at the removal of everything like local administration, and the centralization of the whole departmental authority in London. In 1857 and 1858 it was again introduced by Roebuck, but his motion was on each occasion rejected, although there was not a member bold enough to support the continuance of the office in principle.

The same year Sir William Somerville, the Chief Secretary, had once more brought in the Land Bill which he had introduced without success in 1848. This time it passed the second reading in the Lower House, and was consigned to the care of a Committee; but beyond that stage it never got, being shelved to make way for more important business. Sharman Crawford also reintroduced his Tenant Right Bill which had been rejected in 1848, but he was again defeated. In 1851 Sir H. W. Barron moved for a Committee of the whole House to inquire into the condition of Ireland, but his motion was rejected through the influence of the landlords by a majority of nine. Distraught with their own cares, scattering their profusion in the gaudy vestibules of the Great Exhibition, the mellifluent voice of selfinterest bade the prodigals hold their largess-loving hands, and not yield to the supplications of misery, when the gratitude of poverty could be their only gain.

The Civil Bills Act was passed the same year. Up till 1851 the remedy of ejectment for rent in arrear was not applicable to tenancies from year to year not created by written agreement, the landlord being obliged to determine these tenancies by notices to quit. This involved a delay, which was a great protection to tenants whose immediate ejectment would have involved in many cases the greatest misery. The Civil Bills Act of 1851 took away this protection from yearly tenants whose rent was under £50, and they were placed in the same position as tenants under a written agreement. This was all the more unjust as there were at the time 608,066 holdings in Ireland, of which probably not more than 30,000 were over £50.

In 1852, when the Whig Ministry had gone out, and Derby, who came in with the Tories, had dissolved Parliament, some fifty tenant-right members, who went by the name of "the Irish Brigade," were returned to the House of Commons, pledged to work for a radical reform. Very soon, in spite of the fair promise which gilds the sails of every new enterprise, a split became discernible in the body of the Tenant League, and after a short while two distinct parties made their appearance. The first was

1 John Arthur Roebuck (1801-1879), member for Sheffield.

led by Duffy and Lucas, and constituted a majority of the representatives of the League. It was earnest and united in purpose, concentrating its energies upon winning a thorough measure of Tenant Right and effecting a radical and, it was hoped, final reform of the troubled Irish land system. The second party, known as the Pope's Brass Band, was numerically much weaker, composed in part of the survivors of O'Connell's "Tail," and partly of unstable adventurers who were ready to sacrifice the cause of the Irish farmer and what was thought to be Irish freedom for narrow and impracticable ends, or for merely selfish objects. The chiefs of this faction were John Sadleir, his brother James, a young lawyer named William Keogh,1 and Edmund O'Flaherty.

The same year a Parliamentary Committee of the House of Commons was appointed to inquire into the state of those parts of the counties of Armagh, Monaghan and Louth referred to in the Queen's Speech as being disturbed, as well as into the immediate cause of crime in those districts and the efficacy of the laws for its suppression. The committee, of which Bright was a member, suggested that there should be but one panel of jurors to try issues civil and criminal at the assizes, in addition to any special jury which might be lawfully summoned, and that measures should be adopted to secure strict impartiality in the constitution of the jury panel. They also recommended that the attention of the Legislature should be directed at an early date to the laws which regulated the relations of landlord and tenant in Ireland with a view to their consolidation and amendment, especially such as might provide adequate security to tenants for permanent improvements, and otherwise place the relations between the two parties on a more satisfactory basis.

In 1852 another Valuation Act was passed which reverted to the former system of valuation by a fixed scale of agricultural produce. Sir Richard Griffiths, in his evidence in 1869, showed that it was a live-and-let-live valuation, according to the state of prices for five years previous to the time of valuation. Griffiths' valuation was a rough-and-ready way of estimating the value of land, but on the whole it was a fair one, and the Land League speakers condemned all rents above it. On February 10, 1852, Sharman Crawford obtained leave to introduce a Bill to regulate the Ulster Custom; but shortly afterwards the Liberal Government went out of office and was succeeded by that of Lord Derby, and Crawford's measure was consequently defeated by a majority of 110.

The same year a Bill embodying the doctrines of the "Three

1 William Nicholas Keogh (1817-1878), appointed Solicitor-General for Ireland in 1852 in Aberdeen's Ministry.